But when he came to where Pythias had intended to leave the next thicket, he discovered where the big buck had set himself for the first leap then wheeled to slip back into the laurel. Ten feet to one side, the strip of cloth that had turned him still whipped in the wind. Pythias had tried again to leave the thicket, been turned a second time by another fluttering cloth and leaped wildly out at a place where Ted had hung no ribbons.
The buck's pattern changed completely. He was safe in the thickets, knew it, and had never deigned to run while sheltered by friendly brush. Now he was running, either in great leaps that placed his bunched feet six yards apart or at a nervous trot. Ted began to have hopes.
Pythias had the acute senses of a wild thing plus the cunning of a wise creature that had eluded every danger for years. But the wilderness he knew changed only with the changing seasons. What did the fluttering cloths mean? Where had they come from? What peril did they indicate? Pythias' tracks showed that he was becoming more nervous.
Ted pushed him hard. The buck could not reason, but if he passed enough of them safely and discovered for himself that there was no danger in the red ribbons, he would pay no more attention to them. An hour and a half after taking the track Ted knew that, at least in part, he had succeeded.
Unable to decide for himself what the fluttering cloths meant, Pythias swung away from the thickets into beech forest. Now he ran continuously. In the thickets, knowing very well that he could not be seen, he had walked until the fluttering cloths introduced an unknown and possibly dangerous element. This was beech forest, with visibility of anywhere from fifty up to as much as two hundred and fifty yards. A hunter might be anywhere and well the buck knew it. He was going to offer no one a standing shot.
Ted followed swiftly, for now the hunt had a definite pattern. A young buck, chased out of the thickets on Burned Mountain, might linger in the beeches. A wise old one would hurry as fast as possible into the thickets at the head of Coon Valley, and the nearest route lay through the scrub beech at Glory Rock. Ted was still a quarter of a mile away when he heard the single, sharp crack of a rifle.
He left the trail and cut directly toward Glory Rock. A volley was very picturesque and sounded inspiring, but whoever ripped off half a dozen shots in quick succession was merely shooting, without much regard to aiming. Ted murmured an old hunter's adage as he ran, "One shot, one deer. Two shots, maybe one deer. Three shots, no deer."
He ran down the slope into Coon Valley and found John Wilson standing over Pythias. The hunter's delighted eyes met Ted's, but mingled with his delight was a little sadness, too.
"I now," John Wilson said, "have lived."
"You got him!"